Late and Belated
by Marauder
Summary: Companion to Facing. After Sirius's death, Remus takes to visiting the veil the way others visit a grave. Even in death, the essence of Sirius is still defiant...not a resurrection fic. RLxSB. AU since HBP.


**This was originally written for the S/R FQF: the challenge was "AlternateUniverse: The fabric of the Veil thins enough on Christmas day to allow communication."I took it because it sounded like the sort of fic I would hate, and I wanted a challenge. Thisficis a companion to Facing, though it stands on its own as well.  
**

_30 June, 1995_

It's a very hot night, probably the hottest one of the summer, perhaps even the hottest one of the decade. Remus has only worn a pair of old pajama bottoms to bed, which is odd for him because usually he likes to keep his scars covered, even if he knows there's only he and Sirius to see them.

Sirius, on the other hand, has decided to sleep naked. The heat is so overbearingly humid that the pair of pajamas he put on at first felt like thick and heavy dog fur. For some reason, though, it isn't too hot to nuzzle against Remus's bare chest.

"What are you doing?" Remus mumbles, half-asleep. Sometimes sharing a bed with Sirius is like trying to spend the night with an enormous and eager puppy.

"Cooling you off," Sirius replies, running his tongue over Remus's nipple. He knows he's probably heating some parts of Remus up at the same time he's cooling off others, but in another few days they have to go to 12 Grimmauld Place in London, and Sirius doesn't know if he can make love in that house. If only the damn building weren't so perfect for headquarters, and if only Dumbledore weren't so paranoid about Sirius being captured, they could stay in this cottage in the country with the mirror above the bed. They'd lived here during the last war.

"Padfoot, it's too bloody hot out."

"We can go in the bathtub."

"I'm trying to _sleep._"

So Sirius gives up trying to have sex with Remus that night and stares up into the mirror, watching both of them until he sees that Remus has fallen asleep. He leans over to kiss Remus on the forehead and then gets out of bed, taking Remus's discarded blanket with him. Sirius wraps it around his waist and goes to sit down at Remus's desk in the corner by the window.

There are two battered quills in the inkwell, and an abundance of parchment in the top drawer. Buckbeak, who is outside in the garden, sticks his head through the open window and emits a quiet questioning sound, but Sirius pats him on the beak and gestures for him to go away. The hippogriff jerks his head, a half-nod, and staggers off on legs that are tethered to the side of the cottage.

**30 June, 1995. Dear Moony,** Sirius writes. **It's the hottest night of the year and you're fast asleep, one hand dangling from the side of the bed.**

_25 December, 1995_

"It didn't seem as though he particularly cared," Remus says, pulling the quilt up to his chin.

Sirius is sitting at the window seat, writing on a piece of parchment; he doesn't look up when he answers. "He's got a lot of things on his mind."

"Still, we've never given him a Christmas present together before. I've never given him one at all." Remus realizes that he's putting too much emphasis on Harry's reaction to their gift, but all this year he's been hoping for some sort of indication from Harry, something that might hint how Harry would feel if he knew his godfather and his former professor were in love. They spend so much time worrying about him and hoping he'll have the strength he needs, and yet there's an essential part of their lives he never seems to have guessed at.

Sirius, who has been in a good mood all day and therefore more like the way he used to be, hears the apprehension in Remus's voice and puts the quill back in the inkwell. "We'll tell him, Moony," he says, getting off the window seat and stepping closer to the bed. "I have absolutely no idea when, but we'll tell him. Someday when the time is right."

"The time's never going to be right," Remus says. "If something bad has happened to Harry, he has too much to deal with without finding out his godfather's gay, and if something good's happened to him you won't want anything to _spoil it._" The bitterness invades his last words before he can stop.

This was bound to happen, Sirius thinks. He gets into bed next to Remus and begins to stoke his hair, against the way it falls, the way Remus likes. Remus doesn't speak.

"I don't think we'd spoil anything, Moony," Sirius whispers into Remus's ear. "Or at least, I hope not. But you've said it yourself, we haven't had even the slightest indication of how he might feel about it. There's so much that depends on Harry."

"So finding out his godfather fancies men might destroy the fate of the wizarding world?"

"He's a teenage boy, Remus! Teenage boys can act like nutters over just about anything."

"Speaks one who knows from personal experience," Remus mutters to himself.

This calls for backrubs, Sirius decides. He slips a hand up Remus's shirt and rests it on his shoulder; when Remus fails to protest Sirius does the same with his other hand and begins to knead the knots next to Remus's neck. "I promise to tell him. I don't know when, but I promise I will."

"Please do," murmurs Remus. Sirius leans in to kiss him.

"What were you writing?" Remus asks a few minutes later.

"Your Christmas present."

"You already gave me my Christmas present." Sirius had sent out Tonks with several Galleons and orders to bring back at least half of Remus's reading list.

"This is a different Christmas present. It isn't finished yet."

"When will it be?"

"I don't know."

"It seems there's a lot you don't know today," says Remus.

"I know I love you," Sirius replies.

_25 December, 1996_

Sirius always had a fascination with representations and reflections of things. Perhaps it came from living in a house with so many moving portraits. When he was younger, James used to tell him that he only liked mirrors because he wanted to look at himself.

"Well, sort of," Sirius said. "Things are the same but slightly different in a mirror."

Remus lent him his father's copy of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ when they were in their sixth year of school; it left him transfixed. Remus would catch him in the corridors and stairwells gazing at the portraits from a distance, chewing on his lip rather pensively.

"Do you think that could ever really happen, Remus?" Sirius asked. "A portrait that shows every bad thing a person did? Maybe everyone has one in the, I don't know, the underworld or afterlife or whatever there is."

Later, when they'd left school and moved in together, Sirius attached a mirror to the ceiling above their bed. Remus had never known exactly what they looked like, from a distance, as they made love; they were more graceful than he would have thought.

After Sirius went to Azkaban Remus couldn't sell the house. The taint of murder had blemished it in the eyes of everyone who considered buying it, and he found himself alone with the mirror night after night. He could have taken it down. He could have moved into the other bedroom. Instead he lay awake and wondered if the Sirius he had known had existed solely in a distorted mirror world, where things were the same as they otherwise appeared but greatly different.

Years later, after Sirius died, Remus destroyed the portrait of his mother. It took the removal of a wall section to accomplish it, but he was determined to eradicate her screams and ravings from the last place they had ever been together. Mostly everyone stayed away as he worked, except for Moody, who willingly helped him detach the wall from the floor and cast various hexes on the portrait with a certain amount of relish. When it was all a heap of wood, paint, and ripped canvas, Remus thought about _The Picture of Dorian Gray _and wondered if he had somehow obliterated Mrs. Black's soul. Her son must have loved her once.

"He never told me you two had been roommates," Harry said, about a month later when Remus had taken him from his aunt's house and brought him to live in the cottage in the country.

Remus was alone now, and he tried to do what Sirius might have done. He showed Harry the photograph he kept next to his bed. It wasn't a great photograph by any means; Tonks had taken it without Sirius or Remus's knowledge, they were wearing dressing gowns and had messy hair, and all around them everyone else was eating breakfast. But, more importantly, in that moment they were clinging together like the two boys of Whitman's poem, and their mouths were undulating in a slow but almost rhythmic dance.

Remus couldn't remember when exactly it was when he discovered that Sirius had no relevance to conventional wisdom. Was it when Sirius escaped from Azkaban? When Remus discovered his sanity was still more or less intact? Perhaps it was even years before that when Remus realized that to be a werewolf did not guarantee a loveless life.

Regardless of when it was, it was this discovery that brought him to the veil one or two evenings a month.

"I want you to remember, I don't think he's going to come back," Remus said the first time he was preparing to go, in August. Harry was sprawled across the couch in the parlor. He was giving Remus a very odd sort of look, as though he was trying to figure out whether he had gone mad. "He's dead, he's been dead for the last two months, and no matter what we do he's going to stay dead. I don't expect that to change."

"Then what do you expect?" Harry asked him.

Remus glanced at himself in the mirror. "I don't expect anything. If there's one thing I've learned over the course of my life it's that a person's expectations are liable to fall flat. However, knowing your godfather, it wouldn't surprise me if he's managed to somehow defy everyone else's expectations for a final time."

Remus wondered if it would be too morose to go and visit the veil on Christmas Day, but after some thought he decided that it would be all right. Other people went to cemeteries for a few minutes at Christmas, to visit the graves of people they loved, and there was no grave for Sirius. It had taken a lot of influence on Dumbledore's part to convince the Ministry that Sirius was even dead, and even more for them to declare Sirius's will legitimate.

Harry had gone straight from Hogwarts to the Burrow, where Remus was scheduled to meet him for Christmas dinner. After that Harry was to go home with Remus and spend the rest of the holidays at the cottage. Since Sirius's will had made Remus Harry's new guardian they had been bound to each other legally, but the emotional bonds were still forming.

The Ministry was mostly empty when Remus arrived, but the guards were ones familiar with his visits. A brief eye contact assured him his entrance and he proceeded onward to the chamber that held the veil.

It stood there, fluttering, the voices beyond it so clearly human but yet indistinct. Remus regarded it more a moment and then sat down upon the floor the way he usually did. The floor was cold.

"Sirius, it's Remus," he began. At first it had seemed foolish to talk to a piece of ancient fabric in hopes that his lover could hear him, but desperate hope had overcome his nervousness. "Today's Christmas; I don't know if you know that. Harry's with the Weasleys at the Burrow, and when I leave here I'm going to go and join him. We're getting used to each other. After dinner he's coming back to the cottage, and he's staying there with me until he goes back to Hogwarts.

"He's – he's working hard at school. Gryffindor beat Ravenclaw at Quidditch but they lost to Hufflepuff. He misses you a lot, I can tell that. I gave him your motorbike since the last time I was here. From what I can tell in his letters it seems like he spends a lot of time working on it, and flying it around the Hogwarts grounds at night. I think he's trying to find ways to feel closer to you. He asked me in his last letter how to find your star in the sky.

"I'm not working yet, except for the Order, and that keeps me busy. I – this is going to sound odd to you, but I got a cat. I know, I lived alone for twelve years, but for some reason it seems stranger now to come home to an empty house than it did before. A dog wouldn't have been right, and I remembered how you always got on with Crookshanks, so…she's still a kitten, really, though she's nearly full-grown. I told you Buckbeak went to live with Hagrid, didn't I? He can take care of a hippogriff better than I can. I visit Buckbeak at least once every week, though.

"I should probably leave soon, even though I don't have to be at the Burrow for another couple of hours yet. Sometimes I worry that I come here too much, but Sirius, every single day I think about you and I think of things to tell you, and when I – "

He felt the warm pressure of a hand grasping his shoulder.

It was most definitely a hand; Remus could feel the individual fingertips and the position of the palm. He took a slow step forward; the hand remained. He took a step backward; it pressed harder into his skin.

"Sirius?"

The hand squeezed twice.

Remus muttered, "Everyone always says how they're surprised I'm holding up as well as I am, how it must be hard for me to have so much strength, and now I'm having delusions – "

Three fingertips pressed against his lips.

"_Sirius,_" he whispered against them. They retreated.

He had the sensation that Sirius was standing very close to him, the fronts of their bodies a mere inch or two apart. "Can – can you speak to me?"

The invisible hand took his own and gently pulled it upwards. For a second it retreated; Remus stood with one hand aloft, questioning. Then the hand he could not see pressed his hand forward, and under his touch he felt the contours of a cheek and jawbone. They slowly moved from side to side.

"No."

Up and down.

"Is there something you want me to do?"

And then Sirius's phantom body was all over his; Remus could feel the long silky hair, Sirius's leg pressed against his, even a faintly beating heart that startled him. Hands slid around to his back and pulled him closer to – Sirius's ghost? No, for this Sirius could not be seen and did not speak. His _essence._

"Darling, I – "

The warm – yes, it was warm – feeling of Sirius's mouth enclosed his. The lips were soft; the tongue was familiar. Remus closed his eyes and leaned inward.

"Padfoot, I don't know what it is you want," he said when Sirius had retreated. "Is there something you've come to tell me? Something I should tell Harry?" Once again his hand was pressed to the face of the shaking head. "A message for someone else? A – is it because it's Christmas?"

Sirius's head nodded vigorously.

To his own surprise, Remus laughed. "You always did like to give presents."

Sirius's hand took his again; Sirius was pulling him towards the exit.

"You can't leave here, surely."

The hand yanked, and Remus found himself being lead back to the Ministry's main hall, past the new fountain they had built, to the fireplaces that were used for floo powder travel.

"Where?" he whispered under his breath.

Sirius pulled him into the fireplace, and a moment later Remus realized he was standing in Harry's bedroom in the cottage.

He couldn't find Sirius, then; no hand touched his, and he no longer felt that Sirius was standing very near to him. Yet he was close, Sirius was close; he was somewhere within the room.

"Padfoot?" Remus called, though he knew that Sirius was unable to answer him. For a second he wondered if Sirius hadn't been able to leave the Ministry after all, but he was _there,_ he was –

He wasn't at the desk, and he wasn't near the window. He wasn't in the doorway, either. With a slight throbbing in his head, Remus collapsed on Harry's bed.

Sirius was in the mirror on the ceiling.

He was naked; his body was definitely one belonging to a man of thirty-six, but the haunted look in his eyes had vanished. In the mirror's reflection he was inches away from Remus on the bed, one arm lying above his head and the other resting at his side. Remus recognized details of Sirius's body he had begun to forget: the small mole on his chest, the shape of his toes, the way his pubic hair was a mass of glossy curls. Each new breath that entered his lungs was shallow. Their eyes met and Remus realized he was beginning to grow aroused.

"This is Harry's room now," he said dazedly.

Sirius laughed without sound. In the mirror Remus saw Sirius climb on top of him; below on the bed he could feel the persuasive weight of Sirius's body. He ran his fingers through Sirius's hair as his clothes were removed and tossed over the side of the bed.

"I want you," he murmured. "I _need_ you, I, oh, Sirius, I've been alone and it seems like so much longer than it's been – "

He felt an eager tongue on his neck and a firm hand between his hips.

Their lovemaking was long and intense; when it was over Sirius rested his head on Remus's chest and slipped an arm around his waist. Remus, who had yet to take his eyes off their reflection, saw the contented look on his lover's face and sighed.

"I told Harry," he said.

Sirius looked up. _I know,_ formed his quiet lips.

"I wish you had been there."

_I do too, Moony._

Remus clasped Sirius to him. "Will I ever see you again?"

_Not here. Not until you pass beyond the veil._

They held each other for a long time until Remus said, "Well, I was right. You had your final defiance."

Sirius smiled. _I did._ One finger stroked the curves of Remus's face.

_I have to go, Remus._

"I love you," Remus said. There was no sadness or despair in his voice, just a simple and beloved truth.

_I love you too. Always._ Sirius's reflection was beginning to fade. _Look under the window seat at headquarters._ And then he was gone.

Remus dressed quickly and apparated to 12 Grimmauld Place; he was already slightly late for meeting Harry at the Burrow. Once he entered the house he ran up the creaking stairs and into what had been their bedroom, not so very long ago.

The cupboard under the window seat was dusty, with a dead doxy in the corner. Remus had to feel about for a few seconds before he found the papers in the back.

**For Remus: A Book of Love Letters**

**30 June 1995 to 29 May 1996**

**A belated Christmas present**

**from**** Sirius**


End file.
